[Mb-civic] Communist chic - Jeff Jacoby - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  Communist chic

By Jeff Jacoby  |  April 30, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

IN JANUARY 2005, Britain's Prince Harry attended a birthday party 
dressed as a Nazi <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4170083.stm>. When 
the London Sun published a picture of the prince in his German desert 
uniform and swastika armband, it triggered widespread outrage and 
disgust. In scathing editorials, Harry was condemned as an ignorant and 
insensitive clod; months later, he was still apologizing 
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4246518.stm> for his tasteless costume. 
''It was a very stupid thing to do," he said in September. ''I've learnt 
my lesson."

For a more recent example of totalitarian fashion, consider Tim Vincent 
<http://www.notablequotables.org/mrc/2006/vidclips/2006-04-14-NBCAH.wmv>, 
the New York correspondent for NBC's entertainment newsmagazine, 
''Access Hollywood." Twice in the last few weeks, Vincent has introduced 
stories about upcoming movies while sporting an open jacket over a 
bright red T-shirt -- on which, clearly outlined in gold, was a large 
red star and a hammer-and-sickle: the international emblems of 
totalitarian communism.

And what was the public reaction to seeing those icons of cruelty and 
death turned into the latest yuppie style? Was there a furor? Moral 
outrage? Blistering editorials?

None of the above.

Enter ''hammer and sickle" into a shopping search engine, and up pop 
dozens of products 
<http://froogle.google.com/froogle?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-09,GGLG:en&q=hammer%20and%20sickle&sa=N&tab=gf> 
adorned with the Marxist brand -- T-shirts and ski caps, bracelet charms 
and keychains, posters of Lenin and ''Soviet Kremlin Stainless Steel 
Flasks 
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000COYXN4/103-6588628-7575061?v=glance&n=1036592>."

The glamorization of communism is widespread. On West 4th Street in 
Manhattan, the popular KGB Bar <http://www.kgbbar.com/> is known for its 
literary readings and Soviet propaganda posters. In Los Angeles, the La 
La Ling boutique sells baby clothing emblazoned with the face of Che 
Guevara 
<http://www.lalaling.com/e-store/prod_details.asp?pid=493021264972578&pcid=462971946980816>, 
Fidel Castro's notorious henchman. At the House of Mao 
<http://www.poole-associates.com/house_of_mao1.htm>, a popular eatery in 
Singapore, waiters in Chinese army uniforms serve Long March Chicken, 
and a giant picture of Mao Zedong dominates one wall.

What can explain such ''communist chic?" How can people who wouldn't 
dream of drinking in a pub called Gestapo cheerfully hang out at the KGB 
Bar? If the swastika is an undisputed symbol of unspeakable evil, can 
the hammer-and-sickle and other emblems of communism be anything less?

Between 1933 and 1945, Adolf Hitler's Nazis slaughtered some 21 million 
people, but the communist nightmare has lasted far longer and its death 
toll is far, far higher. Since 1917, communist regimes have sent more 
than 100 million victims to their graves -- and in places like North 
Korea, the deaths continue to this day. The historian R.J. Rummel, an 
expert on genocide and government mass murder, estimates 
<http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM> that the Soviet Union alone 
annihilated nearly 62 million people: ''Old and young, healthy and sick, 
men and women, even infants and the infirm, were killed in cold blood. 
They were not combatants in civil war or rebellions; they were not 
criminals. Indeed, nearly all were guilty of . . . nothing."

Yet communism rarely evokes the instinctive loathing that Nazism does. 
Prince Harry's swastika was way over the line, but Tim Vincent's 
hammer-and-sickle was kitschy and cool. Why?

Several reasons suggest themselves.

One is that in the war to defeat Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union fought 
with the Allies. World War II eventually gave way to the long-drawn Cold 
War, but America's alliance with Moscow left in many minds the belief 
that when it counted most, the communists were on our side.

Moreover, the Nazis didn't camouflage their hatefulness. Their rhetoric 
made only too clear that they loathed Jews and other ''subhumans" and 
believed an Aryan master race was destined to rule all others. By 
contrast, communist movements typically masked their ruthlessness with 
appealing talk of peace, equality, and an end to exploitation. Partly as 
a result, the myth persists to this day that communism is really a noble 
system that has never been properly implemented.

Third, the excesses of Joseph McCarthy hurt honest anticommunism. In the 
backlash to McCarthyism, many journalists and intellectuals came to 
dismiss any strong stand against the communists as ''Red baiting," and 
conscientious liberals found it increasingly difficult to take a vocal 
anti-Soviet stand.

But perhaps the strongest explanation is the simplest: visibility. Ever 
since the end of World War II, when photographers entered the death 
camps and recorded what they found, the world has had indelible images 
of the Nazi crimes. But no army ever liberated the Soviet Gulag or 
halted the Maoist massacres. If there are photos or films of those 
atrocities, few of us have ever seen them. The victims of communism have 
tended to be invisible -- and suffering that isn't seen is suffering 
most people don't think about.

''Communist chic?" The blood of 100 million victims cries out from the 
ground. To wear the symbols of their killers is no fashion statement, 
but the ultimate in bad taste.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/04/30/communist_chic/
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